He’s not alone, Tim is just one example that Google has showcased to bolster trust in their products like AdSense, but Tim seems to come up an awful lot when Google makes changes to the algorithm.

In times past, he’s been used to illustrate successful publishing because he doesn’t try to “game the system” by using link-building techniques that violate Google guidelines.

The thinking being that, “If Tim can do it – you can, too!” For many years, that selling of the good life by being a good web publisher has worked in Google’s favor.

The relationship between Google, Inc. and Tim can be illustrated by the fact that Tim has testified before on Google’s behalf when issues of anti-trust litigation have arisen, and he has been referenced as a success story on Google’s behalf on more than one occasion.

But something happened with 2011′s Panda and 2012′s Penguin updates that you may not be aware of: this knight-in-shining-armor for white hat SEO practices has lost 70% of his traffic thanks to updates that were supposed to reward “quality, original content” and “punish webspammers.”

AskTheBuilder.com has for years produced nothing BUT original content, and does not engage in webspam for Google to punish.

For those of you who plan on “playing by Google’s rules” to reap the reward of free SEO traffic – listen carefully to this interview. Ask yourself the following:

Do you think you can use SEO as a main traffic source, so long as you “play it safe” (according to the ever-shifting rules of Google)?

Do you think that SEO has a predictable ROI?

In a year from now, will all your search engine traffic still be growing, or subject to yet another algorithm “correction” designed to “punish the bad guys?”

Should any business be built using SEO as a main source of traffic?

Who really benefits from these algorithm updates: white hat SEOs? Blackhat? Or a third party named “Google, Inc.?”

Google claims they want to reward quality content, but can they keep a straight face in light of many examples to the contrary?*

But there’s a breaking news twist to the story. Don’t miss it.

I’ll warn you ahead:

It’s not polished.

It has klutzy moments – I was nervous, I’m human and flawed.

It’s long.

But bookmark it. Share it in your social networks for others to hear. Refer to it and spread the news.

The message in this interview is much bigger than my blog and deserves attention, so please link to this post and get word out to everyone thinking about SEO for traffic.

I don’t embellish the case when I say this is a ground-breaking, newsworthy story. To hear it, listen to the interview in full.

Key Googlers’ Quotes to Keep In Mind

While listening to the interview, please keep these priceless quotes from key players at Google, Inc in mind. The mixed message from Google should become pretty apparent (all bold text has been added editorially):

[Panda] is designed to reduce rankings for low-quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high-quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.

…Google depends on the high-quality content created by wonderful websites around the world, and we do have a responsibility to encourage a healthy web ecosystem. Therefore, it is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded, and that’s exactly what this change does.

In the next few days, we’re launching an important algorithm change [Penguin] targeted at webspam. The change will decrease rankings for sites that we believe are violating Google’s existing quality guidelines.

…Sites affected by this change might not be easily recognizable as spamming without deep analysis or expertise, but the common thread is that these sites are doing much more than white hat SEO; we believe they are engaging in webspam tactics to manipulate search engine rankings.

Finally, Larry Page, co-founder of Google and current CEO, once upon a time had this to say about what Google was all about (before Google began turning search into billions of dollars in profits):

Most [web] portals show their own content above other content elsewhere on the web. We feel that’s a conflict of interest, analagous to taking money for search results. Their search engine doesn’t necessarily provide the best reults, it provides the portal’s results. Google conscientiously tries to stay away from this.

What to Do Now?

There are 3 steps I’d like you to consider taking in response to this post.

1) Write to your state representatives or relevant authorities where you live.

If you’ve been unfairly hit by Panda or Penguin, or suspect that Google is inserting results that are more self-serving than actually quality, please write a letter to your state representatives in the U.S.

Stick to the facts. This means that if you have content scrapers that have replaced your rankings using your content (like I have), collect URLs and give links and evidence to make the case.

If you’ve contacted Google and haven’t seen a resulting correction, or notice that content farms and spun articles (or other low-quality sites) have replaced your rankings, write that down.

Someone needs to hold Google accountable to do what they claim they’re doing.

If you’re not in the U.S. then contact the appropriate authorities (and feel free to link to them in the comments below).

2) Please share this post on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google+, StumbleUpon…you name it. Use the buttons floating to the left of this post in the share-bar, or as you leave a comment there are options to take.

Thanks – the message deserves to get out to as many channels as possible, so please do so by linking to this post please.

3) Please join me in my new venture if you want traffic resources you CAN trust.

SEO is just one traffic resource, but it’s no longer one you can base a business on. Since I’ve been online, Google has been shaking the search community up in regular intervals.

If you’re an SEO, they do NOT have your best interests at heart: Google owes no SEO a lick of traffic, that message is loud and clear.

So while I think writing senators and taking a part in getting this message out there is a step in the right direction, it won’t get you traffic, either.

So what now?

Do you keep building sites that are “Google friendly” when Matt Cutts claims that Google punishes sites “they believe” are engaging in webspam (even when they are not)?

My answer?

Quit riding the Google roller coaster.Get most of your traffic from other resources Google doesn’t control.

To learn more, please join me in my new venture by entering your email below, we all need traffic but we don’t need Google (and they don’t reward white hat SEO – more on that in future posts from my own front yard).

The fact is that SEO’s are trusting Google to provide free traffic from a hostile, self-serving source of traffic that’s currently being or has been investigated in one degree or another (on multiple continents) for anti-trust allegations.

We business-owners need to ask ourselves if we can truly expect today’s Google traffic to bring in tomorrow’s customers, and ask ourselves “On what grounds?”

Why do we trust Google with the lion’s share of our traffic, when they keep shaking up the SEO world? If you’re paying for AdWords – haven’t you heard of the thousands of webmasters getting their accounts shut down?

Google answers to nobody, they settle out of court and little litigation seems to stick.

They’re literally “too big to fail,” but what that means for the small businesses online is that you’re too little to succeed in a Google-run ecosystem.

If you think otherwise, you’re either on their payroll or haven’t been online long enough to get Google-slapped.

White hat SEO and following Google’s ever-changing rules is no guarantee of your now and future success, it’s that simple.

*For Further Evidence You Can’t Trust Google

If you think I’m being too cynical on Google’s practices, please follow these links. Doing this interview, Tim made me do my research.

I’m not happy with what I found:

Video of Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, before a Congressional Subcomittee (which lead to a letter imploring the FTC investigate Google’s monopolist/anti-trust position):

That interview resulted in this letter filed against Google by members of Congress, asking the FTC to investigate:

Former Justice Department prosecutor, Beth Wilkinson (famous for convicting the the Oklahoma City bomber, Timothy McVeigh), commissioned by the FTC to lead their investigation into alleged Anti-Trust violations of Google:

138 Comments

Well, I have to wait till the kids leave for school before I can listen to the interview but I am looking forward to it. I love Tim’s site, lots of great info, and I will be interested in his perspective.

I usually don’t like listening to these types of interviews but this one was very, very interesting since Tim has such a unique perspective. I really enjoyed hearing about his history with Google and his thoughts on the future – very insightful.

After listening to this I am finally starting to feel a little motivated about picking myself back up after Penguin.Carrie recently posted..Help Me for Free

Google is indeed evil because they tricked us
into filling the ‘net with “quality content” -
not because it’s good for us, but because it’s good
for Google.

As Tim Carter mentioned, Google is now
STEALING our content as snippets on their page.

Try it out – type in the father of propaganda
into a tablet (like the ipad):

Eddie Bernays

Now look at the right-hand side
of the search results… Google is stealing
content from various websites
and displaying it on the first page of Google!

If you look real close, they do offer
a link to the source, but it’s not underlined
and in faint gray color. Obviously,
Google doesn’t want you to click
on these links.

Finally, Google’s search results
will go exclusively to Google’s
“Blended Results” – so it’s going
to be next to impossible to show up
first on Google starting soon.

And if you’re not first in Google’s search results -
you’re toast. That’s no organic referrals for you.

So Google has pulled off the scam
of the century – they dangle the carrot
(easy AdSense cash), pulled it away from us
over the last 3 years… then tell us we need
to up the free bar to get those earnings back.

Hey Google – pound sand.

I’m done with you.

I now host my own private ads – I wrote
an 8,000+ word blog post about it here:

It’s an excellent interview, very enlightening (Tim’s been at this since 1995) and shares a lot about those early hey-days.

Even though being online, especially with affiliate marketing, has become so difficult, Tim still maintains that being an online entrepreneur is the way to go. So, for me personally, to hear such uplifting news towards the end is very positive indeed.

Thanks, Tara – and I’m stoked he was willing to do the interview. He’s a giant in SEO and marketing, at least always has been in my mind, referred to a lot by the upper crust in Google and elsewhere (I doubt any members of Congress know my name, for instance).

His perspective is a rarity, and he has a lot of insight in contrast to my short time online, so it was a pleasure to see things from his P.O.V.

What Google thinks and does, can never be clear unless we get some ideas from the persons like him.. The recent update of Google Panda was totally shocking which left many bloggers killed.. Many in my circle lost almost 80-90% of their search traffic. I just need to say that i got some nice tips from this post and the interview. Thanks for sharing. :)Prithvi recently posted..How to Overclock Graphics Card ?! Overclock video card..

Awesome Interview, James…and you don’t sound awkward. The direction that he advises is the direction that most SERIOUS marketers need to consider.Leo Dimilo recently posted..When a Myth Becomes a Brand

Thanks, Leo – and it does come down to that. Premium content, as he talks about in his article I put a link to and the interview, is something that most are going to be too lazy to try. The big point being that gaming Google isn’t a way to do business and think it’ll stick. Those days are over…

Not that SEO is dead (not so long as there’s a search engine, it won’t be), but it’s far from stable. Anyway, rambling here…

Great post! I have been hit hard as well and it’s time to do something! On the day Penguin hit I changed my browser start page to duckduckgo.com. In addition I am doing most of my searches on other search engines.. I know… it probably does not make a difference, but if LOTS of other marketers did the same may be it starts making a difference!!!!Sandra recently posted..Net Space Profits Review

I feel you. In local SEO, it’s important to make sure all your identifying information that appears in online citations are all the exact same. Another important thing is to get those citations from Yelp, from online directories, from your local Chamber of Commerce…any networking groups you go to…

Just thinking out loud. Local SEO is it’s own can of worms, but I think those are some potential sticking points to consider.

Then again, you can only spend so much time on that aspect of your business: you may find you get more referrals doing things the old-school way…

Oh, one other thing I’d suggest if you can do it: do YouTube vids if you can. Get customer testimonials and tag them with your location + keyword, or location + services you provide…

Anyway, hope your ventures make a turn for the better. I remember competing against those guys in Charlotte as I was remodeling before I left…I just leveraged a fax machine and Craigslist and made my living that way: hit up the local real estate agents and property managers…

Before the Oct panda update, I dominated the local market holding number 1/2 positions with ease for my keywords. Since then, it’s been a struggle to move from page 3 to 1 and with every new update I get bumped back.

Site’s that keyword stuff and do shady on-page seo rank along side major directories.

As for citations, I’ve got close to 200+/- using the same exact data as G places with videos, images, etc.

Maybe I’ve done way to much and triggered some filter. IDK..

All I know is, I got nailed big time and haven’t fully recovered. I can email you my website if you’ve interest.

I totally agree. The only reason Google has gotten a pass for so long is that, as I said in a thread on SEO’s Unite, is that most Congress members don’t understand the online landscape (SOPA clearly illustrated that.) Once they start catching on, the hammer will drop.

I’ll have to see if I can catch my rep at one of the next business networking meetings. He’s pretty awesome. Before going to Congress, he was a judge and he’d do stuff like make offenders stand outside with signs of their offenses. He was the one who gave the light bulb speech (youtube . com/watch?v=HCZ9LpSHLgo.)

At the last meeting I saw him at, he talked about the important of small business and then he said, “People ask me what I do in Washington. I tell them, ‘I go and fight evil every day.’”

A behemoth of a corporation that essentially controls access across multiple verticals hurting the livelihood of small business . . . I’m sure that would be something that would get him riled up.

Ah, yes – don’t mess with Texas! The fact is that search marketing is still such a niche technology and industry, it’s hard to get people to appreciate what’s really going on.

Google does such a good job of obfuscating the truth of their self-serving SERPs (i.e. Universal Search results as one of the links illustrates so well), that you can “legally” talk your way around indictment.

It’s a new frontier still – so it’s hard to pin down Google when they’re talking apples to your oranges. Virtual business is a critter all its own, but I think Google’s savvy enough (sadly) and rich enough to keep hiring the best attorneys that they’ll keep getting away with it: at least that’s my cynicism showing through.

I’m all for smaller government personally (I think there should be a lot less legislation), but when a bully gets this big they should have to answer to somebody…or at the very least, the market they serve should stand up and realize they’re not being served as well as they used to be.

But will that realization ever penetrate the everyday man? I worry only the search marketing community will stand up and our story will just make passing headlines that get ignored by the majority.

>>A behemoth of a corporation that essentially controls access across multiple verticals hurting the livelihood of small business . . . I’m sure that would be something that would get him riled up.<<

It would also be nonsense. No one is entitled to one single visitor from Google. They owe you nothing. If they want to put the worst sites on the web in the top positions, they get to do so. If they want to promote their services at the expense of yours or mine, they SHOULD be allowed to do so. It's only because of big government overstepping its bounds that something like that is considered wrong.

And I say this as a person who was hammered by Penguin. But I'm not a hypocrite. I support small government and reject crony capitalism all of the time, not just some of the time.

Even if I had a perfect, white hat site that got hit by Penguin I still wouldn’t be contacting my representatives. Google can program their algo anyway they choose. They owe website owners nothing.Carrie recently posted..Help Me for Free

I’ve been meaning to reply to your comment, Kevin – as a small-government person myself, honestly I included the link to the House of Rep’s out of deference to my guest who asked for me to get the word out.

On the other hand, since there is an investigation afoot, I figured my readers could follow through as they see fit.

As I see it, no matter how badly you’ve been hit by Google, they’re a for-profit company that’s free to run their index as they see fit – and the fact that they haven’t been indicted yet or had government do much to quell their growth speaks volumes to this effect.

Since I’ve built links every way I see fit, I won’t be writing anyone any time soon (and I wouldn’t either since the sphere of government shouldn’t have a say to how a search engine is run – it’s all freedom of expression one way or another).

I won’t be writing anyone either, but I think Tim has a point since they had him testify on their behalf earlier. There is nothing wrong with him changing his stance and testifying against them this time.

I personally don’t like it when the government gets involved in things they don’t understand.

Kevin/Carrie: perhaps you’ve heard of your credit score, compiled by FICO? Everyone uses it, from employers to banks to landlords. FICO is a private company. Along with your thinking, FICO does not have to tell us what data they use, or what our score is, or give us a chance to dispute the information they used.

Except that they do, because the government has said they do. And we’re better for it, because before FICO had to do this, they were using a lot of bad data to compile a person’s score and people’s lives were being ruined by a private company simply because everyone and their uncle trusted that private company implicitly, the way people trust Google.

Well a FICO score is plain silly to begin with, but I understand your analogy. I’m not sure I’d use it to apply to Google just because of the fact that Government doesn’t need to grow any bigger than it is. Personally I’m not sure what the “right” answer is here, but I think Google is well within their rights as a company to run their search listings as they see fit.

Of course I’d love to see some changes, but that’s up to Google IMHO. The way I see government involvement is much like the IRS: anything they do will be more limiting on our freedoms. A private company like Google messing with their own product/service: the fact is the market should decide their fate.

Do we keep using their product?
Do we keep optimizing for their traffic?
Do we play by their rules? etc.

The irony is that the odds are that those ehow articles were written by someone without a clue about home improvement but got the info from AskTheBuilder.com.

Ain’t that the truth? I had clients on Elance telling me to do something similar, only they’d provide the content for me to rewrite. They said it was content they’d paid for, but the fact remains that this is really how a lot of writing gets done when you outsource it to someone unfamiliar with the topic.

There’s always a right way and a wrong way and people more often than not choose the wrong way because it’s the easiest way.

Having said that, there’s nothing wrong with taking content from someone, rewriting it, putting a different spin on it and then publishing it as your own. The key to that, however, is that you have to know what you’re talking about in the first place.

Whatever google is planning, all I can see is they’re putting plus on the big guys. I find google as a Business Search engine and no longer a stand alone SE. I can’t believe tim got hit by the update.Carry recently posted..Finding a nursery home for your loved one

I don’t know how to move forward. I feel like 10 years spent learning SEO are useful for other people who don’t know a thing about it (and have clients who have benefitted greatly from my knowledge), but yes, SEOing for Google, producing quality content for Google and making sure it’s easy for them to index it… that has become a real mental quandry I have yet to figure out. My traffic and my online income is also down 70%… just a regular guy producing quality content to help people.

It’s easy for me to work on other people’s stuff because I can improve their rankings easily. But I’ve pretty much stopped promoting as an affiliate over the past 12 months (previously my primary source of income to bring high quality, qualified traffic to other people’s sites and products) because I’m pretty sure Google hates affiliates, no matter what kind of content they produce. I told this to someone who said “But Google has their own affiliate network.” Uh-huh… and…?

Google owes me nothing, they never have. But I feel very thrown out with the bathwater, so to speak, and am not sure how to move forward at the moment.

If I manage to recover rankings on my Penguined sites (for lack of a better term) I’ll definitely post what I did.

It’s hard to say for sure, but one step to take is to analyze what’s replaced you and how they’re “better” from an algo-P.O.V.

Things like site layout (the above the fold should have content vs. a call to action or ad, despite what Amazon does apparently), over-optimized H1-H3 tags, keyword density shouldn’t be too high (compared to what’s there), anchor text needs to be natural (compared to your competitors)…

I had to pull out my SEO PowerSuite set of tools to really dig into the comparison, which I’ve still yet to complete.

But so far that’s where I’ll be looking…I also wonder if many sites that are ranking are using Schema.org markup, but I haven’t heard many people talking about that.

I’m not sure there’s an easy-to-spot answer, but I have to look at it anyway. Then there’s that quality guideline set of questions that Amit Singhal came out with on Google’s blog after Panda came out – not sure if you remember it:

Great interview…….it left me feeling a little down because I’ve seen SEO as a great way to start a business with very little (I mean next to no, got to scrape to buy raman noodles) kind of money. Now that it seems that we’re being forced into buying ads, it take away that advantage.
I was really looking forward to bootstrapping a business using just the profits, but now I’m not sure if that’s possible.

Well you could move forward following their guidelines, but there’s just no guarantee you’ll keep your ranking if you attain top spots. Since I’ve been online I’ve had a number of bigger names try to warn about Google – I always thought they were just doing things less than stealthy, so I kept my mouth shut and kept at it…

Tim is a real legend when speaking about internet quality content and adsense. Unfortunately, he is perfectly right, low quality sites are way above genuine content creators. It’s so unfair, but we cannot do anything about it.Jack Sander recently posted..Dog house plans free

Hey James, I’m not sure if the FTC is going to do anything about what is (and isn’t) found in search. From reading the FTC letter, it seems like the biggest concern has to do with the search listings having google related products squeezing out the competition.

That does seem to be their focus, and I’m not really sure how much control they can exercise on a private company doing what they do. Can they tell McDonald’s to stop putting milkshakes on the menu? Not sure about that. (OK maybe the FDA can…)

There’s only so much we can expect Uncle Sam to do about Uncles Larry and Sergey. In the meantime, businesses need customers, online and off – with or without Google.

We all know how evil Google is and how much they suck because they dropped you and all your friends out of the rankings that you have so comfortably held for the last few years. And as so many people have illustrated what’s wrong with the most recent update, highlighting the incidences with random fringe cases of “when an algorithm goes bad”

But do you think that the people who suddenly are ranking think Google in the same light? And do you think that they are thinking to themselves, “how on earth did my crappy article get to be the most relevant one in search?”

Probably not. In fact, they are thinking the same thing as those who were ranking before them…that they have managed to become the most relevant and that they deserve to be in that spot.

I know it sucks that companies like eHow can hire freelancers to do rewrites of articles that pretty much say the same thing (but with different words) but for most niche marketers who are driven to write for non-competitive keywords, there is very little difference (besides scale) between a one man show microniche marketer laboring over rewrites of rewrites and a big company outsourcing content from writers who essentially do the same thing.

I’m just saying. I think if you have ever dipped your foot into the niche / content marketing pool and if you have ever “cheated” rankings by forum profile links, link wheels, bought links exclusively for SEO, etc., then you can’t really complain.

The difference between the big boys (hubpages, ehow, etc.) is the amount of content they produce daily. A regular ma and pop marketer simply can’t compete with the bigger engines because the scale of unique leaves a much bigger footprint.

Tim Carter has a reason to complain because he never did any of those things. And he was basically a victim to a corporation (or groups of corporations) doing the exact same things as most niche marketers would do but the difference was the scale of the operation.Leo Dimilo recently posted..When a Myth Becomes a Brand

Google is self-serving and driven solely by money. People who think otherwise are deluded. Google has become the despised web monopoly that Microsoft became on the PC (think Apple Vista ads).

Their end game is to bubble their conflict of interest revenue generating cash cows (Amazon, ebay, etc.) to the top of the organic and paid search results without losing too many search engine users.

They’re trying to pluck as many feathers from the golden goose without actually killing it.

My prediction … greed will trump common sense, they won’t go back to their original premise until they reach the point of no return and they end up killing their golden goose.

Once users start noticing the page one saturation of self-serving organic and paid links for most keywords, people will start to clue in and bypass Google, go straight to the predicable results like Amazon and type in their keywords or they will go to a different engine like Bing that returns more than just paying Google customers.

I already know users, myself included, who have started using Bing for every day searches because the top Google results simply suck. Many are worse than ezinearticle bait.

When I’m looking for quality information on a topic I already know Google is going to return ehow, Amazon, eBay, About.com and YouTube, and paid advertising for virtually anything I type in. Google has a big bucks material connection to each of them. Why bother typing it in, when I can just go directly to those sites or check out Bing for other possible sources.

It’s kind of poetic in a way. The reason I started using Google years ago (truly relevant search results) is the same reason I’m using it less and less now (truly irrelevant search results).

Amazingly, I’ve never used any kind of search on a day-to-day basis. I generally use the kabillion bookmarks I already have stored, courtesy of xmarks, and search through them with the find function of Firefox.

Perhaps I should start using Bing on the infrequent occasions that I don’t already have what I’m looking for. It can’t be any worse than the crappy G results I’ve been getting lately (while looking for competitors to skype).RT Cunningham recently posted..An Update to my JavaScript Encryption Demo

Great article, the james and tim interview is a bit long but worth sitting through. I have to say i hate penguin, I personally know of sites that have less then 200 backlinks which are all natural, just people that have linked, so perfectly normal natural links being built, the sites are selling for example sheds, so their site has the keyword sheds all through it, its their only product, it cant be called anything else,to lower the ratio of the word shed, and penguin smashed them, i can only assume its about the word shed being used too much, but its their product, business name and obviously keyword.it cant be called a thingydoodle, because human visitors wont have a clue what the sites about (dramatic example). anyhow, penguin is stupid and i enjoyed your post :)

The technology to tell originality is as simple as using CopyScape or one of the 100′s of other services out there. I don’t think the issue is that Google *can’t tell* if it’s duplicate content or not, and that’s part of the problem: what they claim they’re after doesn’t add up to what’s showing in the index.

If you look at the supplementary links for “further proof you can’t trust Google,” you’ll see that something else is driving their motivation to alter their algorithm.

But it sure sells a better image in the press if they claim their after “quality content.” It also makes sure they stay out of hot water in the anti-trust allegations they’re constantly facing.

I wonder would it have helped him if he claimed his content using Google Authorship. My thought process is that because he has all these scrapers stealing his content Google doesn’t see it as being 100% original.

His version might get the benefit of the doubt, but like people who were syndicating content via article directories (and the article directories themselves) he might have received a duplicate content ding that brought his site down quite a bit.

I think the way he describes eHow, etc, they’re ripping his content under the fair use doctrine, at least in eHow’s case that seems to be the M.O. But you’d think “rel=author” would prevent some of that…I’m not really sure what they’re doing with that other than inserting yet another markup hoop to jump through to rank or not rank sources as they see fit.

The way it could be used is to penalize all of James Hussey’s articles, for instance – if I get on the black list. Now I am crossing the line into pure conjecture, but right now I’m not a big believer in what they claim vs what they’re really up to. But it would make sense for the spam team: if legit authors could make a voice in a market, that’s one thing – but it could possibly be a black mark on your rankings if you don’t have that markup…

Also makes me wonder about the schema.org markup – has that helped anyone ranking? Just a question, but it makes sense that if Google keeps requiring this or that markup, those that comply may out-perform those that don’t. But I have nothing concrete to say one way or another if that’s helped or not: my rel=author tag is missing from my niche sites, and some went up, others went down with Penguin.

I am afraid that Tim is right. I have been thinking about the same stuff since last year but didn’t put much weight on it because I thought people would think I am crazy or something. How can good quality content not matter right?

Here is what’s happening. All these big brands that Google loves feel threatened by us the little guys. If you are an expert you can start your own blog and build wealth for yourself. The big companies don’t want that. They want you to work for them for $15/hour and create that content on their properties not your own!

Google’s practices always have a hidden purpose. They desperately want to get into lead gen. That’s where the money is at. Google is now the biggest affiliate. They soon will get rid of everyone who stands on their way to completely dominate the lead gen market.

Thanks for the link, will check it out. It’s clear that Google operates for their own benefit, plain and simple. Their profits show they know what they’re doing, it’s their competitors like affiliate marketers that will suffer the consequences since we’re after the same traffic.

It’s weird since the internet is supposed to be one of the great ‘equalizers’ where we’re all on the same footing. Little businesses competing with the big dogs, and Google seems content to tweak the algorithm to put the big dogs on top time and again.

That’s my cynicism showing through, but it’s hard not to see things that way.

The amount of traffic that goes through Google that tends to buy vs. those going through FB and Bing still puts Google on top. Facebook traffic is more social rather than commercial, for example. So it’s not premature by a longshot, at least if you’ve been one of the millions getting majority traffic to money pages via Google.

Bing does make up 30% of the traffic online, but all that means is that you’ve lost 70% of the traffic you used to get from Google…and that translates into “holy cow, how do I make a living?”

I feel slightly torn in terms of Google’s latest change, however I do think it will make some people work harder to improve their site if they are worried about losing out on traffic. And by “some people” I mean people who use black hat strategies to get the traffic they had before the changes took place. It’s only fair to those of us with legitimate websites being outranked by spammy type sites. Thanks for sharing this interview – I just came across your site and your intro on the header of your site made me smile :)

Thanks for dropping by. And I don’t feel bad for those who were spamming links and who knew better, but I do feel badly for those who were taught to do so from people they trust.

There have been a lot of newbies receiving bad advice from the get-go, and I was one of them but truthfully I knew my link-building wasn’t in Google’s “best practices” list, so I did what I did knowingly.

I’ve tried to point that out to people in writing this blog (that spinning articles, for instance, isn’t something on Google’s white hat list of approved tactics), so in my business I’m having to really think carefully about what I say and to whom.

I don’t want to add to people’s future demise, so trying to find my voice and make sure I’m not part of a future financial crisis on someone’s efforts is big to me.

At the same time, seeing Google insert themselves time and again in a sales funnel makes me wonder why we play by the rules and they’re constantly inspected for anti-trust issues…

Uh…sorta begs the question on who’s writing the rules here.

If it’s dog-eat-dog, and a link is neither ethical or otherwise (building a link and posting it in an article directory that’s asking for your content to begin with is not an ethical dilemma I have ever struggled with, for example), then build links and watch your back, folks.

You do what’s right for your business – it’s not like I’m losing sleep for submitting articles, you know?

I see the relationship between SEO’s and IMers and Google like a dysfunctional family: Google saying, “don’t build doorway pages” and the like are constantly referring traffic back to more and more AdSense-covered pages they own or otherwise make a profit from…

Or they tell us that we need to think of making sure that content above the fold is content: yet have you seen the SERPs? Everything above the fold makes money for Google: it’s all ads or Universal Search results…

It’s pretty hard for me to have a conscience issue about link building – but sure, I hear you. We have to watch our own backs, and if that means go all white hat then that’s that, I suppose.

“I think the way he describes eHow, etc, they’re ripping his content under the fair use doctrine, at least in eHow’s case that seems to be the M.O. But you’d think “rel=author” would prevent some of that…I’m not really sure what they’re doing with that other than inserting yet another markup hoop to jump through to rank or not rank sources as they see fit.

The way it could be used is to penalize all of James Hussey’s articles, for instance – if I get on the black list. Now I am crossing the line into pure conjecture, but right now I’m not a big believer in what they claim vs what they’re really up to. But it would make sense for the spam team: if legit authors could make a voice in a market, that’s one thing – but it could possibly be a black mark on your rankings if you don’t have that markup…

Also makes me wonder about the schema.org markup – has that helped anyone ranking? Just a question, but it makes sense that if Google keeps requiring this or that markup, those that comply may out-perform those that don’t. But I have nothing concrete to say one way or another if that’s helped or not: my rel=author tag is missing from my niche sites, and some went up, others went down with Penguin.”

i think you are on to something here i never trusted this new schema.org markup!!! i smell scandal in every direction at this point!!

Excellent article and interview James. It seems clear Google is intent on feathering its own nest only, as can be seen from its recent launch of Google Shopping. As Tim Carter says, the future is in ebooks on the Kindle – but that future may only last around 10 years until Amazon becomes totally dominant, after whichit may be time to findsome other way again.Vic recently posted..Predestined (Existence)

Between Amazon and iTunes, I think there’s plenty of room. Also don’t forget that ebooks are just one form of media – we live in a multi-media world. Different people want text, some want video, others audio, still others prefer email or whatever. Finding a message is one thing, then building your channels and distributing the content in various forms is another way to extend your reach.

Google doesn’t really need to have any control over your business, the internet itself is just one “form” of media distribution: you can always leverage traditional business channels. Just thinking out loud here.

this is why i have grown to hate seo because you spend so much time focusing on ranking and seo techniques instead of on the end user. i am now learning more about ppc and would rather focus on the real marketing , customer targeting and conversions.

There’s a lot of crossover between AdWords and SEO, at least in terms of relevancy. But AdWords is also another thing to watch out for – a lot of people have had successful runs with Google’s ads but have had their accounts randomly shut down. Just like they do with SEO and slapping sites – if you trip one of their many filters, or if you don’t do anything of the sort (like the interview illustrates), you just can’t put all your eggs in one basket.

Sad to say but on all fronts, you don’t want to put your business in Google’s hands. If you do PPC, they’re top of the dog pile…but I’d still mix it up with other forms of advertising so you’re not entirely resting on Google.

I had the first and most reliable indicator of just what Google was up to in 2006 when I was banned from Adwords for violating a rule they hadn’t invented yet. That is quite true.

They were a month or so away from ceasing to publish and make money from ‘run your car on water’ ads. These adverts remained legal on Bing for many years after then but at the time in question Google told me I was breaking their rules which was clearly not true and they followed up smartly by banning me from Adwords and of course that ban is still very much in place.

A small point but a valid indicator of where they were and are headed.

The governing rationale simply is this: if you pay the piper you call the tune. All their actions are skewed in the direction of their being commercially responsive to their owners (corporate America), not their users and certainly not to the businesses in thier index. This is the key point to grasp.

Thanks for the interview – I found his point of view interesting… That is, until I dug deapper… Using 1 tool, ahrefs, I have found tonnes of duplicate “black hat” pages linking to his website. Here are some of them:

I don’t think that these links hurt his site, mainly because Google has been adamant in times past that links to a site don’t hurt it (and I know with Penguin everyone keeps saying Negative SEO is real and all that, but keep in mind this was long before Penguin).

Also, as to the page layout algorithm – that was released earlier in 2012. It had nothing to do with Panda when Tim’s site was hit.

Thanks for the reply, I work for a well know Australian SEO agency & even though some dates of algorithm changes vary from Aus & US, I have seen tonnes of sites that have been hit by incoming links. If you are saying this was before penguin, it might have been one of the releases of panda. Even though Google said that this was more about content farms, the other releases .1 .2 .3 .4 were the leadup to the “over optimisation” which makes me believe that they must have been penalising duplicate off page content before the release of Penguin.

I don’t know the dates of when Tim was hit & I don’t know the keywords that tanked – I would be very interested to look into it further, but the evidence that I can see point to a bad link profile.

Well I don’t think that he was hit for having off-page dupes out there, either: if Google loved his site (they did), they were spidering it (they were), and they would know by a simple time stamp that the original content was his with or without the rel=author tag.

I think the whole re=author tag is being used by Google for reasons hinted at by Cutts and others – namely to determine the reputation of an author and therefore his or her credibility and trust in the SE’s eyes.

That’s based on past videos of Matt Cutts making comments before the markup was released. When Google makes a mistake in their algorithm, it’s expected that “some sites go up, others go down,” and they chalk it up to plain “collateral damage.”

The cost of doing business, in other words – and it doesn’t hurt them (Google) so they don’t bother to fix it.

Tim’s case is just flat-out odd because it illustrates the total apathy of Google when it comes to your business partners (or whatever other label you want to put on Tim: Google leveraged his success to bolster their own and left him out in the cold without so much as a manual review and manual reinstatement).

I don’t take the view that Google is doing what they claim to be doing, and don’t believe that they’re simply mathematically punishing spammers. Their algorithm goes through hundreds of updates a year and major ones, like Panda and Penguin, alter the search results after the fact.

Danny Sullivan posted in March of this year how the impending “Over-Optimization Update” was coming (Penguin), and how Google was lumping in good SEO with spam and confusing the two.

He even went on to describe how Google needs a massive overhaul from its infrastructure on up, because the algo is simply patched here and there to quell the outcries of “spam in the index” that media outlets and webmasters complain of…

Panda was supposed to deal with content farms and duplicate content issues, scrapers and the like.

Did it? No, not really.

Penguin was supposed to deal with link spammers smashing out links – did it accomplish the goal?

Google seems to think so. I don’t have a big enough network to confirm or deny that myself, I’ll leave that for further analysis – but my main point is that it’s understandable that an SEO will say,

The problem is again with the glaring fact that Google upheld Tim’s site for so long that frankly his site getting tanked was an algorithmic cataclysm, which they’ll chalk up to as “collateral damage.”

Whoops. Hey, it happens…moving on…

That’s their attitude on these things. I don’t think Tim got hit because of negative SEO. I don’t think Tim built those links (he didn’t have to, Google practically did his marketing for him). I don’t think he got hit because Panda ‘works’ as intended according to the official press…

But I do think that Google has ulterior motives: they want more profit. Maybe they meant for Tim’s site to go down the tubes, maybe not.

In their quest to dominate the web (video, search, PPC, hotel reviews and travel and air fare, product comparison engines…), they’ll do whatever it takes to squeeze every last drop out of their traffic. What that means plain and simple is that SEO isn’t reliable as a main source of traffic.

You can’t fault him for having other sites (out of his control) scrape his content. He mentioned that in the interview, but there isn’t much you can do about it. A week after you do a DMCA notice they’ll be back up with another domain.

What’s funny about PubSubHubbub is that Matt Cutts informed Glen Allsopp (I can never spell his name – he runs ViperChill.com) that PubSubHubbub wasn’t a good idea. Now I need to go find that tweet. I thought it was strange considering Google owns it.

Edit:
Glen alludes to it here, but doesn’t name the plugin (but it was PubSubHubbub, now I’m having trouble tracking that source…):

Unique and Quality content is still king; even more so now that Penguin is released. The more that those human evaluators contribute to the algorithm, the more that content is going to become more and more important.Pete recently posted..Denver SEO & CommentLuv – Proper Link Building

Well I think it’s always been the way to go (unique/quality content), if for no other reason than to make yourself stand out from the crowd and keep people coming back for more…

But it’s no guarantee. Neither is going all white-hat, but the main point of my interview and this post is that Google can’t be the main source of traffic for our businesses if we expect to thrive year in and year out.

I have noticed more and more that my searches yield garbage and I can’t find information on what I want to; maybe Google will lose all its business if some other search engine starts delivering relevant content.

I was always all for Google in their attempt to make people deliver truly interesting, relevant content but since now they are happy to serve up garbage if it pays them better it is time for me to find a new way around the internet.

Well I’m banking on not relying on Google for my business personally. I’ve little hope that they’ll fold up any time soon – and as long as they’re around I’ll continue to get traffic from them whether I want to or not (it’s easy to rank accidentally for random searches, it’s just inevitable)…

SEO isn’t dead, it’s just not something to put all our eggs into, even if up until now you’ve felt “safe” (I’m directing that comment at people reading, not you per se, Mary).

You’re right in that the internet is not going to be the same tomorrow as it is today. Adapting to the changes is what keeps us afloat.

But no – I meant what I said about depending on Google. Up until now it’s been too easy to gain rankings: just spin an article and submit some links for a longtail keyword in a profitable niche.

Write > Rank > Get Paid

Google made that too easy. Someone like me, who’s been in this business and learned a ton of dirty tricks that work too well – oh yeah I’ve depended on Google and expected a free ride.

That’s changed overnight and got real in a hurry – and it sure did impact how I composed content or marketed my websites.

To say otherwise is to ignore what SEO has been focused on: marketing a site to the top rankings in search (and since search is dominated by Google, we’re back to my point: we have depended on Google for business).

I can’t help if the perception is there – but people do use Safari and various mobile browsers (even though G has Android), people still use bookmarks, people still directly type in websites they’re familiar with or that friends share on FB, etc.

Now YouTube gets its traffic largely internally – people subscribe to channels, find YouTube and do searches on site, for example – so I can’t say that traffic all goes through Google (never mind they own YouTube, it’s still a different search engine)…

But hey: that’s the quest I’m on. Traffic apart from Google.

Someone who gets a lot of traffic apart from Google and has for a while: Pat Flynn. He’s doing pretty well without totally relying on G traffic. (He talks about this time to time in his earnings reports I think.)

Just some food for thought. It’s not impossible, Google just wants us to think that way.

But I do want to be clear to my readers: if you’re still ranking, then milk the daylights out of the opportunity. Just diversify your traffic channels beyond Google “just in case.” SEO isn’t dead: sites are still ranking.

I have plenty of sites still ranking – but Google chose to slap the best-performing one in my network so I felt the sucker punch.

I just thought i would share our account at seriously trying to run a semi business without google – it is HARD, and we succumbed right back to google in the end. :(

even though now, once again we are going in desperate search of other traffic sources. this is a truly dire situation they have put the world in, we are already so hurt and stomped on in last 4 years with economy, and all these fat cats just keep stealing from us any way they can!!!

is billions not enough for them???? when does it stop??? My god people out here struggling and going homeless, and they need MORE MONEY!??

how about they give back some of the multi billions that they made by spying and collecting our data!?

this world is so messed up and completely backwards, and i fear it is only going to get worse.

we are watched everywhere we go, and when we make tiny little mistakes they are real quick to slap us around, but no lets not pay attention to the guys in suits and ties who are defrauding us at every angle!

Thanks for sharing your experience. SEO is only one part of marketing, but if you know how to market to people, traffic can come from a variety of channels. Marketing in digital commerce is a little bit about the techy side of things, but mostly about (and marketing is always this way) knowing your market and the consumers in it.

Knowing how to attract your market to your offer, that’s business 101.

And yes, I know it’s much easier to just build links – but that’s the effect of SEO on the marketing mindset. IT departments and keyboard punching monkeys can do link building the old school way (by that I mean: it was too easy)…but marketing?

That’s a conglomeration of skills that transcends the media channels used. So I’m suggesting:

Become a marketer. Stop tying success to one or another channel, and market your business (not just saying this to you, it’s for everyone, including myself).

Google made things very easy. Now they’re making things a bit less predictable. So rather than trying to figure out the next iteration of Google, I’m back to figuring out the people I want to come see my offers and websites, back to business 101: marketing.

not like bing, yahoo, duckduckgo or any others are any better people. have you all checked the results there?? it’s almost identical to the nonsense google is spewing right now. not many users use them, and good luck getting ranked in them. SEO for them is a complete and total mystery.

You wanna know where I’m at in this big scheme of things? I’m working on my own search engine. I already know how to load and crawl any web page in existence, so it’s just a matter of putting the pieces together. It will never be another Google, nor is it intended to be. The goal is pure relevance.RT Cunningham recently posted..Web Development on Ubuntu Desktop

I would highly recommend that you take a look at this information, especially the 1-hour interview on this site, from someone who was held up as the Gold Standard by Google (Tim Carter) and now has had his business destroyed and crushed by Google.

Get behind this issue and you will be doing yourself the biggest favor in the world when it comes to the election this November.”

And about it being depressing: yes it is, frankly. I can’t deny that – this is a new and unfamiliar Google: Negative SEO is real, the SERPs don’t make a lick of sense to me (and I don’t have the uber expensive tools to check all the data I’d like), and it’s a very uncertain time.

But ironically, I do have sites that are ranking just fine – they’re my newer sites, they all followed Duct Tape SEO methods (i.e. they’re “Google approved” methods) – but they don’t make tons of money for me.

My profitable site (and much of my income came from it) is not doing me a lick of good. No action. It’s frustrating – and the time to diversify traffic is now.

James, your interview showed no evidence that you were nervous. The result (along with your additional references) is an alarming indictment of the program the vast majority use to search the Web. Does Google owe anything to anyone? Google has published volumes on how to be white hat, and required those of us who advertise with Adsense to play by very specific strictures. When I invest significant time and effort to play by the rules (I am 100% white hat), and the rules are different for Google products and partners, I have wasted resources to compete on an uneven playing field. It may be legal, for now, but it isn’t fair. Big government? Teddy Roosevelt’s government was not particularly large, but it put an end to the unfair business practices of monopolies.Corky Swanson recently posted..Memory Card Reader and Memory Chip

So today it’s, “Do this, this is how to make more money / rank better / play nice with our search engine and ads…” Tomorrow it’s, “You know, you did that so well we’d like to punish you for taking our own advice.”

Sorry, but there is a BIG difference between SEO and SE Ready. The site in the current stage simply not fit in major parts for a SE – because that changes.

Thats not a problem at all – then you need a different source for traffic. Facebook, Twitter… But really, you can’t remove the thing people search for (text) and assume nothing will change.

Search Engines are not General Search Engines – they are Text Search Engines. Thats a technical fact.
Other searches, just the images for example which google blends in are in fact different SEs mixed together.

There is no O in SEO for ATB in the current stage – because you can’t optimize what is not there.

Its not a question of will of behaviour – the SEs can’t and the Website owner can’t. You can’t breath without air and you can’t do SEO without text.
Except you go BH in some nasty ways. But even they can’t without really.

Google has a defined set of “what we need to rank you” when you check their help pages carefully.
Its all about text.

ATB misses in the current state alot of them.

They rank totally right for what they present the people who search. Penguin was perhaps the trigger but never the reason. I am sure there is no SE where it is significant different. Show me the phrase/key where it is different. Duckduckgo, bing..?

I mean, with that changes you released yourself from google – and google did what you showed them. As it should be. What did i not understood now?

Well, here is the reason HOW AsktheBuilder was growing up and all: web.archive(dot)org/web/20080719170853/http://www.askthebuilder.com/ Ugly, but full of content.Check the other years – THERE the site was building authority on content on the frontpage.Compare that to today – now it looks shiny but there is not reason to rank that.That has nothing to do with Google Update – the Ask the builders OWN SITE UPDATE killed the ranking.

That the site did not crashed in the SERPS just after the changes is IMHO becuase the high authority… In other words, the sites frontpage and main portal entry was awful now SEs view, but it had so much other SEO Bonus details that it did not got tanked out of the box.

Penguin and the Pandas turned that bonus thingy down month by month (which is ok, btw) – and then the site hit the critical point and was going down.

But IMHO it was NOT Penguin! Its a normal down done by a failed SEO affort which cumulated over the time in a crash.

Hey MT – I think Tim (and the wayback machine) knows what and when his site crashed – and it WAS due to Panda. If you have a problem with his analysis, please contact him directly. The gist of your commentary here flies in the face of what he was claiming, and checking the dates on the WayBackMachine you can see his content was SEO’d and doing fine.

What you see NOW is in reaction to a loss of rankings – he’s not trying to rank in an algorithm that’s not going to rank him. So to say “It’s NOT SEO’d!” is silly, frankly – it’s the end result of his site’s penalty.

I lost 95% of my income as a result of the Penguin update. The day after the update was introduced and nearly all of my websites vanished from the serps I made the decision to quit SEO and move over to paid traffic. Today all of my traffic comes from less popular PPC search engines/platforms (I’ll never use Adwords!), my ROI is rising rapidly and I feel great about not being dependant on Google anymore.

G is greedy and does not give a flying monkey’s tail about SEOs or webmasters. My advice is to run away from Google as far as you can.

DJ – it’s working fine, it’s recorded in 2 channels. The way most speaker systems are set up as I understand you have left/right outputs, I’m on the left, Tim’s on the right. I’d check your audio settings or equalizer. Do you have volume control on the speakers themselves? I’m not really an audio tech (hard to tell I know).James Hussey recently posted..My 3 Part Strategy on the Penguin Update Recovery (Part 2) Income Diversification